Who was Vivian Maier? Many people know her as the reclusive Chicago nanny who wandered the city for decades, constantly snapping photographs, which were unseen until they were discovered in a seemingly abandoned storage locker. They revealed her to be an inadvertent master of twentieth-century American street photography. Not long after, the news broke that Maier had recently died and had no surviving relatives. Soon the whole world knew about her preternatural work, shooting her to stardom almost overnight.

But, as Pamela Bannos reveals in this meticulous and passionate biography, this story of the nanny savant has blinded us to Maier’s true achievements, as well as her intentions. Most important, Bannos argues, Maier was not a nanny who moonlighted as a photographer; she was a photographer who supported herself as a nanny. In Vivian Maier: A Photographer’s Life and Afterlife, Bannos contrasts Maier’s life with the mythology that strangers—mostly the men who have profited from her work—have created around her absence. Bannos shows that Maier was extremely conscientious about how her work was developed, printed, and cropped, even though she also made a clear choice never to display it. She places Maier’s fierce passion for privacy alongside the recent spread of her work around the world, and she explains Maier’s careful adjustments of photographic technique, while explaining how the photographs have been misconstrued or misidentified. As well, Bannos uncovers new information about Maier’s immediate family, including her difficult brother, Karl—relatives that once had been thought not to exist.

This authoritative and engrossing biography shows that the real story of Vivian Maier, a true visionary artist, is even more compelling than the myth.

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5,0 su 5 stelleMEET VIVIAN MAIER, BUT DON'T EXPECT TO MAKE HER ACQUAINTANCE!

11 gennaio 2018 - Pubblicato su Amazon.com

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Bannos opens the lens to let us in; at last, here are details about Vivian Maier! I was an early adopter of the Maloof pics and promptly bought his offering. Then it all mushroomed, and rightly, as thousands and thousands of negatives were revealed - the majority had never been printed; what could be more strange! Vivian was a singular talent and clearly knew it, strove to be, but oddly was not bent on sharing her work and becoming renowned. Art for art's sake or in service to some inner measure of precision and an indefatigable need to capture the essence of an instant. Her many self-reflective shots haunt me. People who believed themselves to be her friend never knew of this talent, never knew that their Viv was a brilliant visual artist. Even Bannos could not reveal an inner life so secret, the life of a spy with a camera - it is all speculation, as there is no knowing Vivian's inner world. I highly recommend this biography nonetheless, it fills in many blanks and interestingly, moving through time in a carefully planned manner.

I just finished reading Pam Bannos's "Vivian Maier: A Photographer's Life and Afterlife." What a wonder of a book! Because Bannos is a photographer herself, and a long time professor of photography, she has the skills to give a close reading of 20,000 of Maier's photographs. Using this strategy Bannos gives Maier back her voice. The photographs tells us where Maier traveled (widely!), how her photography evolved (she was a serious photographer), who and what she photographed, how her subjects reacted to her (they have ease in front of her camera), and much, much more. This meticulously researched book allows Maier to be seen, as much as she can be, without the lens of the men who created her "myth" and profited from her work. What emerges is a study of a complex and dedicated photographer. Thank you for writing such an interesting and important book.

A very good and very complete book on Vivian Maier. On the plus side, it clarifies a lot of information that was incomplete or mistaken in the earliest descriptions of her life. On the negative, it's probably bit more exhaustive on personal info than most readers really want. I found myself occasionally skimming ahead to get past places where minutiae about distant relatives and inconsequential events just dragged on. That being said, the book is mostly excellent and very enlightening. Anyone with an interest in Vivian Maier and her work should definitely read it.

It's truly amazing how much minute information Pamela Bannos found on Vivian Maier, though she makes some broad assumptions about what she did where and when. And as much as she tries to assert that Vivian wasn't some kind of kook, that's exactly how Vivian comes across. All of which has nothing to do with the beautiful pictures she took. But even the author agrees they were not all beautiful. She writes about blurry images and repetitious frames. I get it; Vivian Maier was not Henri Cartier Bresson, who would sometimes wait hours for just the right shot, which was printed full-frame and never cropped. I had a problem with so few Vivian Maier photographs being included. Unless you are very familiar with her work you may wonder what the fuss has been about. DESCRIBING photos, as Ms. Bannos does, is not the same as seeing them. This she tries to do way to often. After a while it feels like filler. I did like the way Vivian's life and the ongoing story of what happened to her work was woven together. As far as whether Maloof, Goldstein, et al are profiting by exposing her (pun almost intended), I have a bigger problem with cropping and printing the images. So much can be done in the darkroom to "improve" or change the focus of a photograph entirely. It would be impossible to know how Vivian saw the photograph when she took the picture. The fact that she never developed thousands of them leads me to think that the picture itself was less important than being out in the world the best way she could, hiding behind her "street photographer" persona.

5,0 su 5 stelle) The author manages to combine biographical story of Maier along with a great history of photography

8 marzo 2018 - Pubblicato su Amazon.com

Acquisto verificato

I'm halfway through this pleasurable book and pacing myself so that it lasts longer:) The author manages to combine biographical story of Maier along with a great history of photography. Thank you, Pamela Bannos!